Chris Cardona, from the Venture Philanthropy Fund is one of my favorite philanthropy thinkers and an all around nice guy. Chris did conference coverage for a variety of blogs and he did a great summary of the conference for the Doing Giving Differently blog.

From Chris:

The Council on Foundations is the trade association for organized philanthropy. Its annual conference generally draws about 2,000 people. Given that there are maybe 10,000 foundation staff in the whole country, this is a big number. CoF also holds sector conferences for family foundations, community foundations, and corporate foundations. This year, it combined them all into one big event. It also made a conscious, if not entirely successful, effort to attract more funders from abroad. As a result, the attendance this year was in the neighborhood of 3,500.

After a few days back home, here are some reflections:

Institutional philanthropy is in the midst of a full-fledged identity crisis.

The “next gen” is the place to be.

We’re only beginning to scratch the surface of engagement with our counterparts in other countries.

Strategic philanthropy is important, but don’t underestimate charity.

It’s not clear to me that most foundations are ready to engage with giving circles in a meaningful way.